Eat My Globe

Delia Smith: The Delia Effect

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hey, April.

April Simpson (“AS”):

Yeah, Simon.

SM:

Our subject today is about a famous cookbook author and TV chef. But did you know that Stephen Hawking also wrote a cookbook?

AS:

No, I did not know. What was Stephen Hawking’s cookbook called, Simon?

SM:

A Brief History of Thyme. Get it? T H Y M E.

[Laughter]

INTRO MUSIC

SM:

Hi everybody.

Welcome to a brand-new episode of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn’t know you didn’t know about food.

And today, I’m gonna be discussing how I have always been obsessed with cooking, and one of the people who helped me get to that point.

From when I was about five years old and watching a famous BBC children’s TV show called, “Blue Peter,” which is still running today, some 50 years later. The show featured a cooking segment, which, erm, “taught” me, shall I say, how to make a pizza, which I did and is probably why I still dislike pizza today. It was grim.

Oh, and I also watched cookery shows starring Fanny Craddock, who, to be honest, I remember more for her fall from grace, rather than her time at the top. She was a fascinating woman with a fascinating story so do go and listen to the Eat My Globe episode for the full story.

I used to watch the one and only, Delia Smith, appear on a BBC children’s TV show called Multicoloured Swap Shop, which ran from 1976 to 1982. Now, for my non-British listeners, Delia Smith has been described as

Quote

“Britain’s Julia Child, but more reserved and solemn, at least on the screen. In the flesh she is both thoughtful and ebullient, the sort of instantly likeable person you could easily have a four-hour lunch with.”

End quote.

I’d love to do that lunch.

As I got older, Delia Smith had, by this time, a few programs on the BBC. She wrote a best-selling book in 1985 called, “One is Fun!,” which had recipes for a serving of one and which I used while revising for my degree in Theology at King’s College London. Yes, my mum bought the book for me. Hey, I was studying “Theology.” Where do you think I was going to get any money?

The success of “One is Fun!” led to a TV show of the same name in 1991.

If I remember correctly, the first dish I made from that cookbook was a dish called, “Toad in the Hole,” which is very different from the American “Toad in a Hole,” which is a slice of bread with a space cut in the middle for a fried egg. No, the British “Toad in the Hole” used a similar batter which one would use to make Yorkshire Pudding – like an American popover – with some dried herbs poured over three or four roasted sausages and caramelized onions, and then put back in the oven until the Yorkshire Pudding rose and the sausages were crisp and golden.

[Inhales]

The recipe is still online and on YouTube. Do go check it out on Delia’s pages.

Her recipes worked. I began to cook even more from the book. I consequently became a huge fan of “Blessed La Delia,” as I used to call her.

It was her simple but very correct style that used to appeal to me, and to thousands, in fact, millions of others in Britain.

Delia Anne Smith was born at Wynberg Emergency Maternity Hospital in Woking, Surrey on the 18th of June 1941. Her English father, Harold Bartlett Smith, was at the time an R.A.F. or Royal Air Force radio operator. And her mother, Etty Jones Lewis, was Welsh, like my mum. Etty Lewis was a homemaker, and apparently was a fantastic cook.

When Delia Smith was a teenager, her parents separated. I cannot find out too much more about her father. But her mum was 100 years old when she passed away in 2020.

Of her mum, she once wrote

Quote

“She was very strict and she was my fiercest critic. . . . I think I owe her a lot. In all the success I had, my feet were kept very firmly on the ground, and so I never had a chance to get big-headed.”

End quote.

Delia’s time at school was not, it appears, a great one. Or, at least, not one for her. To quote “Yours” Magazine

Quote

“Having left school at the age of 16 with no qualifications, she went on to work as a trainee hairdresser, a shop assistant and then in a travel agency.”

End quote.

It was at the age of 21, in 1962, that she began her long journey to culinary superstardom. You wouldn’t have been able to tell that from the start, however.

She got a job in Paddington, London. The restaurant was known as “The Singing Chef” and was run by a chef called Leo Evans. His specialty was an omelette soufflé flambé, which sounds rather good. Chef Evans first brought her along to be a dishwasher and then a waiter. Both of which are absolutely fine, of course, but did not necessarily lead to the cooking aspect of things.

Eventually, he asked her to come in and help in the kitchen.

She describes her time in the kitchen as

Quote

“I graduated to be a chopper-up.”

End quote.

The “The Singing Chef” restaurant served different regional French food every Saturday night. She adored French food. And this then led Delia Smith to ask

Quote

“Why, if French food was so good, English food was so awful.”

End quote.

Ouch.

Inspired by her then boyfriend, who had been raised in Switzerland and the US, and took her around the restaurant scene, and apparently talked a lot about an ex-girlfriend who was a cordon bleu trained cook, Delia Smith started to read a range of English cookbooks at the reading room at the British Museum. And then, occasionally, she tried and cooked the recipes she found in the British Museum for the family on Harley St. where she was then residing.

By 1969, she had become successful at writing recipes for books and magazines. And also, apparently, be the cover artist of record albums. A photographer once asked her to produce a

Quote

“really gaudy cake.”

End quote.

And, it had to be

Quote

“look really gaudy and horrible.”

End quote.

Said cake was for the cover of “Let it Bleed,” by the Rolling Stones. So, if you are ever asked how Delia Smith and the Rolling Stones should ever be mentioned together, there you go. You are welcome.

Anyway, in 1969, Delia moved to a new job. It was a brand-new magazine where she became the Daily Mirror Magazine’s cookery writer where she wrote recipes for them. It is here where she met her soon-to-be husband, Michael Wynn-Jones. He was the deputy editor of the magazine.

Her first column was a recipe for

Quote

“kipper pâté, beef braised in beer and five-minute cheesecake.”

End quote.

Which, I have to say, sounds rather appetizing.

Delia and Michael have been married since 11th of September 1971, and still live in a cottage that they moved into near Stowmarket, which is a town in Suffolk. I know that and that is why it makes sense that the book shop there always had a constant supply of Delia Smith books on sale whenever I called there in my former life as a sales rep for Penguin Books.

Anyway.

Delia Smith worked for other publications as well.  One of them was for the Radio Times, which was Britain’s guide to what’s on television, with recipes and interviews with the stars. Another was for The Evening Standard in London, where she wrote starting from 1972 all the way to 1982.

And, in 1971, she published her first book, “How to Cheat at Cooking,” which was, I think, a prototype of how her books and her TV shows would be. You know – straight talking, almost school Ma’am like and showing how each project should be done.

Eric Griffiths, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and English literature lecturer describes her writing as

Quote

“Her recipes do not just begin, they tell you they are at the beginning: 'Begin by cutting the pumpkin in half'. She stays with you all the way, ticking off the instructions - 'First of all . . . When . . . Now . . . Next . . . Then . . . Next . . . Now . . . Then . . . Now . . .' until we arrive together at a 'Finally' . . . . No other cookery writer so resembles a guardian angel, beating its wings over you at every step.”

End quote.

Delia’s writing began to make her well known enough to be offered a “resident cook” role on BBC’s “Look East,” which was a regional show for those living in the eastern part of England. From there, BBC 1 offered Delia her first TV presenting show called, “Family Fare,” which ran from 1973 to 1975.

Let me tell you that having a show on BBC 1 during those days was a very, very big deal. In those days, there were 3 stations, so being on BBC 1 instead of BBC 2 was huge. As the newspaper, The Telegraph, explains

Quote

“BBC One’s remit is to be the BBC’s most popular mixed-genre television service across the UK, offering a wide range of high quality programmes. [¶] BBC Two’s remit is to be a mixed-genre channel appealing to a broad adult audience with programmes of depth and substance.”

End quote.

All of her shows had an effect on the public’s shopping the next day. This was known as “The Delia Effect.”

“The Delia Effect,” as defined by the Collins English Dictionary – yes, it made it to the dictionary – and is named after Delia Smith, says

Quote

“The way in which food products sell out much more quickly than usual when they are used on television food programmes.”

End quote.

I recall this myself when in the 1990s, I went out in August to buy all the ingredients for a Christmas Pudding, only to find that things like chopped peel – something that was really only used at Christmas – and mixed spices – again only used for Christmas – were gone from the five shops I went to visit by 9 am the next day after a Delia Smith show premiered. It is said that the first ever “Delia Effect” phenomenon occurred on her show, “Family Fare,” when she recommended a lemon zester and this caused a nationwide zester shortage. And, Maldon salt is now fairly well-known and popular in the US, but back in the day, the Essex based company – which then only employed 10 people – had to scramble to meet the demand for more salt when its product was on the receiving end of the “Delia Effect.”

Some people, however, particularly other TV chefs, often found her work on television to be condescending. These included Anthony Worrall Thompson and the late great Gary Rhodes, who I loved as well.

Rhodes spoke unkindly about her teaching her audience how to boil an egg and what to look for when boiling water.

And Worrall Thompson and Delia Smith once had a very public argument. As told by the New Statesman,

Quote

“Worrall Thompson said she was ‘the Volvo of cooks.’ Smith responded by saying Worrall Thompson was ‘just repulsive,’ and revealed that after filming, she and her crew liked to sit down and laugh at his show. Apart from Lawson, she was the only female chef on TV at the time.”

End quote.

It seems that she took the “Volvo of Cooks” insult from Worrall Thompson in stride. She would later describe herself as

Quote

“I wasn’t entertaining. I was just about teaching you how to cook — this boring lady explaining step by step. I was like a Volvo, reliable but not very exciting.”

End quote.

The Irish Times gave an example of her reliable teaching style. For example, when making a halloumi dish,

Quote

“She tells you how to boil an egg, fry an egg, knead dough and make gravy. It may sound patronising, but even experienced cooks quickly learn they have been doing every one of these things wrongly.”

End quote.

For all this, her books began to break records. For example, her book, “Delia Smith’s Winter Collection,” which was published in 1995, became the then fastest selling book. And, as of August 2024, three of her books are on the British paper – The Sunday Times – All-Time Bestsellers List. For the record, her books, “Complete Illustrated Cookery Course by Delia Smith” comes in at number 15 on the All-Time Bestsellers List, her “Summer Collection by Delia Smith” comes in at number 7, and her “Complete Cookery Course by Delia Smith” comes in at number 3.

She has sold over 21 million cookbooks. Wow.

I loved Delia Smith not just because of food, because of two other things as well.

What I didn’t know was that while this had been taking its path, she was also a person of faith. She was involved with the Church of England, which is the Episcopalian Church here in the US. She went to Methodist Sunday school and a Congregationalist Brownie group. She then decided to convert to Roman Catholicism at the age of 22. Again, part of the influence of the same then boyfriend who introduced her to the joys of food around the time she started working at “The Singing Chef.” And, she started writing books of a religious nature with “A Feast for Lent,” which was published in 1983, and “A Feast for Advent,” which was also published in 1983.  I find this a particular fascination because, like me, she is a person of faith who finds food and faith so totally wrapped together, just as I have always done.

And secondly, she loves football. My team is, as those who care, Rotherham United. And her team is Norwich City, who currently have a position in the second league of the four divisions, and whose nickname is The Canaries. The difference being that Delia Smith and her husband bought their team in 1997 – I wish I could buy Rotherham United – at a time when the club was relegated from the Premier League and was in need of a cash infusion.

And in 2005, she became famous for something other than cooking when she went out on to the pitch at a match with Manchester City at Carrow Road and uttered the now infamous chant of

Quote

“Where are you? Where are you? Let's be havin’ you! Come on!”

End quote.

According to the Independent, Delia Smith was the fourth richest chef in the UK in 2006. And according to the Daily Star, she was quote, “close to making it to the top five,” end quote, richest chef in the UK in 2020.

She received honors from the then queen as well. In 1995, the queen appointed her as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire or OBE. And then, in 2009, the queen appointed her to Commander of the Order of the British Empire or CBE. And in 2017, the queen made her a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour or CH for her services to cookery.

But, for all of Delia Smith’s accomplishments in cookery, she never considered herself a chef. As she said,

Quote

“Definitely a cook, never, never a chef.”

End quote.

She may not consider herself to be a chef, but she is definitely a fantastic cook and a fantastic cookery writer. Not bad for someone who was once called the “Volvo of Cooking” by one of her competitors.

See you next week folks.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

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Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

[Ring sound]

We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and her essential help with the research.